PESHAWAR, Nov 19: To observe the International Day Against Child Abuse, the Society for Protection of the Rights of the Child (Sparc), has expressed concern over corporal punishment being given to the children in schools and their homes, has demanded of the government to place a complete ban on physical punishment to save them from its effects.

Addressing a news conference here at the Peshawar Press Club on Tuesday, Jehanzeb Khan provincial coordinator of Sparc, said that it amounted to crime when teachers or parents physically or emotionally punished their children.

He said the parents or teachers had the wrong notion that by punishing their children they would be bale to improve their standard of education.

He said that only 50 students were being enrolled in primary schools, the cause of which, besides socio-economic factors, was corporal punishment.

These inhuman punishments, he said left a mental and psychological marks on the children which caused depression violent attitude.

He said Sparc had asked the provincial governments to direct the education departments to put a ban on all sorts of corporal punishment and penalize those violating that ban.

Khan said that there was an intense need to do away with Section 89 of the Pakistan Penal Code which allowed physical punishment in schools.

According to him, parents and teachers should understand the value of punishment-free education.

Not corporal punishment but an environment conducive to education could put them on the right path, said he, adding that Pakistan had ratified the Convention on the Rights of the Child and it was mandatory upon it to draft and implement laws in line with the provisions of the internationally-ratified instrument.

Articles 19 and 37 of the Convention had manifestly spelt out the prohibition on adult from torturing and punishing the child both emotionally and physically.

Khan said that Sparc was vigorously campaigning to put an end to corporal punishment in schools, homes, detention centres and public and private workplaces. Some of the people, he said used iron-rods, sticks and belts for punishing.

Slapping and pulling of ears of small children have become a routine with teachers and the parents which have been the main cause of depression and host of other psychological ailments among them.

In order to educate the people about the ill-effects of corporal punishment, he said seminars, workshops and walks were being organized.